Tag Archives: design

Art Department and Slide Museum

Dana Barrow, Visual Resources Assistant (443-5546)

I’m working with Monica McCabe on the art history and studio art sites:

Monica McCabe, Academic Coordinator, History of Art/Studio Art (443-5234)

Websites I’m re-doing:

  • History of Art and Architecture department website
  • Studio Art department website
  • Visual Resources website

What we’d like to do:

  • Create a new graphic design that mixes art images and short blocks of text
  • Generate new content focused on the people and facilities in the art departments (example: faculty and student profiles), as well as informational content (example: courses and requirements, downloadable forms)
  • Create clear, new information architecture to organize our new content
  • Add photo galleries, video/audio clips, and social networking tools

Areas where I know I need help:

  • Creating video (example: short faculty and student interviews, images of student work, panoramic images of studio spaces)
  • Conceptualizing dynamic (i.e. effective, not necessarily flashy) was to present photo galleries
  • Conceptualizing  dynamic navigation

Ideas from Shel Sax that we’d like to follow up on:

  • A proposal for a winter term class for video making next January (2010) so we can create high quality video clips
  • Creating a space on our site where students (HARC and SA) can create portfolios.  (The model is teacher education.)  This might be a good place to use social networking tools.
  • Fostering some kind of convergence with Segue (examples: portal with access to online exams, course websites, and student portfolios)

General list of things we’d like to do/have (in no particular order):

Information about people in the department

  • Short profiles of faculty, visiting architects, students, and alumni (I will create list of people.)  Models are “My Midd Experience” and the short format of the bios in theater programs with accompanying photos.  Could involve short questions for faculty such as, What is your most recent accomplishment?
  • An online magazine for a more in-depth look at who is studying abroad, faculty research and projects, student projects, etc.  Model might be International Studies magazine (http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/ump/majors/is/)
  • A feature where HARC faculty talk briefly about their favorite works in college art museum
  • Place where we can link to external info about faculty and students (example: College alumni magazine will be doing a feature on John Hunisak and we would like to link to this

Images

  • Images of our studio spaces (studio art and also architectural studies)
  • Photo galleries of student work
  • Photo galleries of faculty art work

Information

  • Info on courses and requirements (SA + HARC)
  • Info on planning your major, including study abroad (HARC – link this to student portfolios)
  • Downloadable forms (HARC – or make this part of student portfolios)
  • Put our department calendar online (HARC – maybe)
  • Special page on architecture and the environment (HARC)
  • Page about student work exhibitions (SA)
  • How-to info on VR site (could be in form of blog or wiki)

Technical Stuff

  • Support for Flash (studio art would like their site to be animated in some way, HARC doesn’t require this)
  • Ability for VR staff, academic coordinator, faculty, and students to add materials to various portions of the site
  • Ability to integrate images into site design (e.g. images of faculty and student art, images from museum collection)
  • A way to create student portfolios online (maybe use Segue)

Inspiring website we like:

  • Some of the pages on the Rhode Island School of Design website (http://www.risd.edu/undergraduate)
  • What we like about it: clear architecture, video, photo galleries, integration of art images into the design

History of Art and Architecture

Courses + Requirements

Faculty office hours

Students and alumni

Visiting the department

Resources (artstor, VR collection, museum)

Photos

Contact

Studio Art

Courses + Requirements

Faculty + Office Hours

News

Facilities

Study Abroad

Student Gallery

Visiting Artist Program

Contact

Sculpture in the form of a chair (photos)

Visual Resources Collection

Note: Made in CMS but links to pages made in another program

Collection Holdings

Stats on our facility and others’ facilities

Middlebury College Museum of Art

Stakeholder: Doug Perkins
Current: http://museum.middlebury.edu/
WebRedo Contact: Mike Roy

General: The Middlebury College Museum of Art is an AAM-accredited museum serving the students, faculty, and staff of Middlebury College as well as local and regional residents of and visitors to Addison County and the Champlain Valley. The museum preserves and displays the college’s permanent collection and offers 5-7 traveling loan exhibits each year to as many as 18,000-20,000 visitors. We serve as a visual resource for a broad spectrum of courses across the college’s curriculum, most notably the departments of History of Art and Architecture and Studio Art, though in any given year we are likely to work with courses in religion, languages, music, philosophy, anthropology, American studies, classical studies, English and American literature, environmental studies, theater, and teacher education. In addition, we welcome nearly 1,000 local K-12 school students to the museum each year through the Museum Assistants Program, a volunteer docent program that offers Middlebury College students a chance to learn about the museum and to lead tours. The museum also oversees and maintains a collection of 20 works of public art displayed around the Middlebury campus, and the museum director chairs the Committee on Art in Public Places.

Requirements:

Needs
* flexibility with respect to aesthetics and typography
* have a portion of the museum home page that shows the next several upcoming museum events
* ability to create email lists to allow patrons to subscribe to relevant lists
* offer RSS feeds for museum press release pages
* maintain the majority of the current site’s look
* participate in brand mapping exercises and discussions related to the college’s brand and sub brands
* online credit card membership form
* e-commerce capability for museum bookstore directly through museum site
* flash banners
* rotating home page image with a click through
* ability to allow people to control font size easily (for accessibility/readability) with one click
* alt text balloons that follow the cursor so that image captions are noticeable (e.g.
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=fr_FR

* online forms for teacher workshop and school group registration

* video-taped lectures for podcasts and vodcasts linked to exhibits (e.g. Art in Public Places iPod tour)

* ability to link to press published electronically on the campus newspaper site as well as other news sites (Addison Independent, BFP, Seven Days, e.g.) and maybe have those stories pulled into a sidebar

* ability to zoom in on images as well as 360 degree image rotation

* online searchable database of the museum collection that is linked to the library’s online catalogue search function so that when students search for books or other media related to objects in the museum collection they will be alerted that the museum holds works that are relevant to their subject

Wants
* be involved in focus groups and usability as design process begins
* create a ‘museum module’ that users could choose to put on their customizable middlebury.edu home page that would allow pushing of info about exhibits, events, and other museum news to users’ customizable home page
* liquid layout, or at least a wider fixed width (950 pixels)
* enable comments on exhibit pages to allow visitors to leave their thoughts about exhibits and related events
* offer virtual audio and video tours either streaming through the site or for download
* allow museum Friends to RSVP on-line for members-only events
* distribute 8.5×11 .pdfs of posters (for printing and distributing at schools, etc.)
* high-quality videos of classroom discussions about art
* tagging
* facebook site (fans of the museum) to reach people through facebook
* ability to create online versions of exhibits with unique appearance (i.e. NOT within existing templates)
* updated design treatment for the Committee on Art in Public Places (CAPP) website that creates a visual link between CAPP and the museum

Nice-to-Haves

* allow students to create their own online exhibits from items in the museum collection (e.g. like what the pachyderm project might allow)

Academic Departments

Heard from Susan Campbell, Department Chairs, Academic Coordinators
Drafted by Renée Brown and Jason Mittell

In surveying department chairs and coordinators, as well as casual discussions with many faculty, frustrations with our current web design and system run deep. Key problems mentioned include lack of design flexibility, difficulty in updating, poor navigation and organization, inability to easily embed images and media, and the static nature of information and site design. There was widespread enthusiasm for the makeover and willingness to participate in the process. Given that every academic department has different needs and specific uses, it is difficult to assess the relative importance of various features, but this document attempts to synthesize key needs and requirements as expressed across the curriculum.

Needs for Departmental Sites

We have identified a number of types of information that departments feel are important to their sites, broken into four major areas:

  • Department Overview: brief mission statement, central contact info, feed of news/events, and visual vibrancy for splash page
  • People: lists of faculty & staff with links to detailed profile pages, office hours & contact info, updates of publications/grants/achievements, alumni & student profiles
  • Curriculum: major requirements (including potential concentrations & sample sequences for more complex programs like ENVS and AMST), independent project guidelines, downloadable forms (both departmental and from the registrar), courses/schedule, links to class websites
  • Resources: departmental library guide, career info, study abroad recommendations, departmental newsletter, facilities & equipment overviews/policies, external links (research sites, grad programs, opportunities for community outreach, etc.), guide to “what can be done with a XXX major?”, feeds from external blogs, video/images of specialized facilities

Many departments indicate that they currently underuse their websites, with minimal information that is rarely updated. There was consensus that this makeover process could help show people some new ways to use the web effectively. During sessions where other websites were demoed, there were frequent “a-has” upon seeing capabilities that other schools are using, so we feel there will be enthusiasm for innovation. Some specific innovations that seemed particularly popular include dynamically generating course listings (a “modular catalog”), faculty pages feeding & linking to schedules and courses, feeds of sponsored & relevant events, and integrated links to Banner information.

We discussed the option of choosing among a group of templates, customized for both visual variety and optimized for different needs (such as more graphics/media, more text-based, etc.) – most coordinators and faculty seem to embrace this option. Coordinators wanted more flexibility with fonts and sizing of text. There was a clear desire for more graphic and media capabilities, especially within the Arts.

Some faculty embraced the idea of student and/or alumni work being profiled and displayed on the site, especially in the Arts. Potential links with the library’s thesis archive is an option worth considering.

Some departments currently publish newsletters, and many would consider publishing them to the web instead of, or in addition to, paper and mailing. Ongoing updated departmental blogs were of interest to a few departments as well.

Needs for Individual Faculty

Faculty pages were noted for being rarely updated, dry, and lacking variability or personality. Faculty were interested in being able to edit their own profile, recognizing that some faculty would be less likely to do so (although no less likely than emailing the updates to coordinators, which could still be an option). Arts faculty specifically want the ability to host images and media of their creative work.

An idea discussed with coordinators was to have a central database for faculty publications/achievements – either faculty or coordinators would enter the information about a new publication (including link to online version or Midd subscription through JSTOR, etc.), which would then feed to the faculty’s homepage, their department(s) page, a college-wide faculty achievement page (which would be useful for library acquisitions as well as PR), and into the annual report for faculty given to the Provost. Coordinators thought this would be a better option than updating individual faculty pages, and expected between 1/3 and 1/2 faculty would enter their own info, growing over time with increased technological fluency.

The idea of automatically feeding a faculty’s scheduled teaching with links to courses to their profile page (as on Amherst) was quite popular. It’s uncertain how many faculty would maintain separate pages through Segue or the community.middlebury.edu server if the core website were more flexible – one option would be to embed separately designed pages into the core departmental site.

Workflow

The current CMS restricts editing to coordinators, although some faculty have edited on the platform. A number of chairs expressed interest in editing their pages, having other faculty edit, or having student workers edit. Coordinators generally want to be involved in the editing process, both to oversee consistency and maintain their web skills, but recognize that the current workflow leads to infrequent updates and little input from faculty.

An easy-to-use editing and authoring system, especially for incorporating media and images, was seen as essential, with the ability to increase participation of faculty in the editing process. One issue expressed by some faculty was that the new system not be tied to a specific browser or platform (e.g. must be usable on Mac/PC and Firefox/IE).

Coordinators were concerned that expanded content on the department site would lead to increased workload. Sharing editing responsibilities would help. Additionally, the ability of sites to be dynamically assembled, rather than static updates, would be useful – for instance, feeding events, faculty publications, career links, library research tools, and alumni news from other offices and systems would make the site update regularly without requiring manual changes.

In imagining the workflow model that would work best for academic departments, coordinators endorsed a system where many users could be given editing ability for the department page (including faculty and student workers), but that all edits must be approved by the coordinator before publishing (via a notification system). This should increase updates from faculty on the content they know best, and allow delegation and distribution of work more effectively, without sacrificing consistency and appropriate form & use of media. Some thought it would be helpful to be able to turn the approval requirement on and off, allowing the possibility of all authorized editors to publish directly.

The idea of a student/alumni section of the site that could be updated (with approval) by students and alumni themselves was mentioned as a way to encourage participation. Another option is a simple webform for alums to send in info to feed into the site, perhaps at the college-wide level with tags to majors and field of employment.

Other Desired Features

  • Many coordinators were enthusiastic about being able to easily customize their own user profiles to make their web use more efficient – after a clear explanation, all coordinators present at the meeting said they’d definitely use this feature.
  • One consistent theme with coordinators and faculty was that as much Banner information as possible should be accessible from the website directly without using BannerWeb. Course rosters (linked from course pages, as on Amherst), student schedules, faculty schedules, lists of majors, and the like should be accessed via links rather than BannerWeb login.
  • More sophisticated use of feeds and targeted info via the web was endorsed, especially as an alternative to email-driven communication.
  • One idea would be to have lists of new library acquisitions in a certain discipline feed into the departmental site.
  • Better management of events and calendar info was mentioned, both in terms of flexible feeds by tag, department, location, medium (lecture, performance, film), and the ability to click “Add to my Calendar” to export to Outlook or other systems.
  • Some language departments mentioned the need for varying language character sets (such as Cyrillic and Greek).
  • Some arts departments want the ability for students to create their own portfolios of their work, as Teacher Ed currently does. This would ideally be embedded directly into the core department site, not externally hosted on Segue.
  • A few faculty expressed interest in having the ability for social networking, and a couple said they have used Facebook pages to coordinate with current majors and alums.
  • A few mentioned the use of wikis, but only for specific purposes (for instance, a wiki for documentation of FMMC equipment).
  • Some suggested a “majors-only” area, although there was not a clear sense of what information and material should have restricted access.
  • One coordinator suggested that departments could have a list of current majors on the site, potentially with links to student pages/profiles.
  • One coordinator suggested the possibility of online sign-up for scheduling of meetings and appointments. Another suggested the use of an online order form for equipment requests (currently used on CHEM site), which might also be expanded to request access to facilities (like MUSIC practice rooms), reserve specialized equipment (like FMMC cameras).
  • A few faculty expressed interest in having the departmental website offer the possibility for discussion and community involvement, not just a one-way flow of information. Options include blog-like updates with comments, an open “wall” to make announcements/promotions, and a department wiki open to Midd users as a workspace for engaging with the department.